Lions GM Brad Holmes gave his end-of-season press conference on Tuesday. Holmes covered a wide range of issues, the most popular of which deals with the team’s future plans at the quarterback position.
It’s been a hot topic of debate for some time. Jared Goff finished the season playing the best football of his seven-year NFL career, avoiding mistakes and helping guide a potent offense to lead the Lions to an 8-2 record down the stretch in 2022. But he still had his struggles when pressured, and he’s the only quarterback on the team under contract for 2023. That leaves a lot of questions about the team’s draft plans and where the No. 2 quarterback for 2023 will come from.
Here’s what Holmes said when asked specifically about the idea of using the draft pick acquired from the Rams, No. 6 overall, on a quarterback,
“I’ll say this, no seriously I think that – I think it’s a lot easier to get worse at quarterback than to get better at quarterback, and so – in this league. And so, I think what Jared (Goff) has done this year, he – captain of the ship of a top three offense, and I want to say he was top 10 statistically in most of the passing categories.
So, and again you know how we approach the draft, like we’re never going to turn down a good football player. So, if there’s a football player we really love, I mean we’re going to make sure every stone is turned. But I do think that Jared has proven to everybody that he is the starting quarterback for us.”
That is a definite vote of confidence for Goff. And an expected one; Holmes has never wavered from the notion that he believed in Goff. His belief was rewarded when Goff proved to be one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks over the final eight weeks of the season.
It’s also not exactly closing the door on using the No. 6 pick on a quarterback if the team believes he’s the best football player available. And it says nothing about the possibility of using a later pick, including the Lions’ own first-rounder at No. 18. Holmes is very careful not to answer more than is asked here.
Later, he was asked about the idea of selecting a developmental quarterback with a high — but unspecified — draft pick. Here’s what Holmes said about that:
“I think it’s a lot of merit, and there’s a lot of proof behind that. You can see countless examples of guys that got drafted high. Obviously, Patrick Mahomes comes up right off the bat of them trading up and taking him high and sitting him, but you can go back to, man, the guy that we just got done playing in Aaron Rodgers.
So, there’s a lot of proof in the pudding behind taking that approach, and I don’t see anything wrong with it. It’s a premium position. They don’t grow on trees. They’re really hard to find. Just like I said earlier, it’s easy to get worse at that position than get better at that position because there’s so few of them. But I’m not against at all that philosophy of ‘draft one, let them sit and develop and just kind of see what you’ve got down the road.’”
That sure sounds like someone who hasn’t ruled out the idea of drafting a developmental-type of quarterback with a high ceiling while letting Jared Goff continue as the starter through at least 2023. It would have to be the right fit for the team, however, and his words and tone make it clear the Lions will not force the issue if they don’t like the quarterback options at No. 6 or No. 18.
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